Lesnes: In the interview you gave to the British Daily, The Guardian, on June 11, did you really say there were "bastards" in the American administration?

Blix: No, no, not at all. I never said there were bastards in the administration. I said; in Washington. I was referring to private detractors in the private sector.

L: To whom were you referring?

B: The people who criticized the IAEA-the International Atomic Energy Agency-, for example, all through the nineties.

L: Can you say a little more about it?

B: No, it's not important enough. These are old stories that were spread about my work in Iraq in 1991-(Note: the IAEA, directed at the time by Mr. Blix was accused of having totally missed Iraq's nuclear program) There were criticisms by former inspectors who reproached us for not being up to snuff; there were articles published by a former Swedish Prime Minister, one in the Washington Times, another in the Wall Street Journal. All that came from the same group of people; it wasn't governmental.

"This is not the first time that force has been used on the basis of erroneous intelligence," Mr. Blix questions the trustworthiness of American intelligence. From our United Nations correspondent.

Lesnes: In the interview you gave to the British Daily, The Guardian, on June 11, did you really say there were "bastards" in the American administration?

Blix: No, no, not at all. I never said there were bastards in the administration. I said; in Washington. I was referring to private detractors in the private sector.

L: To whom were you referring?

B: The people who criticized the IAEA-the International Atomic Energy Agency-, for example, all through the nineties.

L: Can you say a little more about it?

B: No, it's not important enough. These are old stories that were spread about my work in Iraq in 1991-(Note: the IAEA, directed at the time by Mr. Blix was accused of having totally missed Iraq's nuclear program) There were criticisms by former inspectors who reproached us for not being up to snuff; there were articles published by a former Swedish Prime Minister, one in the Washington Times, another in the Wall Street Journal. All that came from the same group of people; it wasn't governmental.

L: At the end of April, journalists from the Presidential Press Corps at a dinner to which you had been invited heard Richard Perle, one of Donald Rumsfeld's advisers, take you to task.

B: That's a mistake. We were speaking of interviews with foreign scientists. He said it would be important to do them. I said it was difficult to make happen, that's all.

L: The Americans are asking for patience with regard to the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. They didn't show you much patience. Does that seem unfair to you?

B: I wish them good luck. We all want to know the truth. It should be easier for them to establish it than it was for us. Witnesses no longer need fear speaking. The totalitarian regime has fallen.

L: What lessons do you draw from the Iraqi crisis?

B: Leading preemptive strikes on the basis of secret services' intelligence is something to which we must pay the most careful attention. This is not the first time that force has been used on the basis of intelligence that has proven to be erroneous.

The bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade was a result of false information. A chemical production factory near Khartoum was destroyed in the same way. This time, a war was begun on the basis of intelligence. We still don't know if it was correct. But the question remains: on what basis may a war be started? Is this basis sufficiently solid? And what importance do we give to having the Security Council's authorization?

L: When did you understand that the war was inevitable?

B: Only at the end. And I don't think it was inevitable until the end. I remember that Bill Clinton, who had begun to send planes against Iraq (in 1998), cancelled the operation when Kofi Annan succeeded in getting the message to the Iraqis. I think that if Saddam Hussein had made some spectacular move, the Americans would also have stopped it all.

L: There was the destruction of missiles.

B: It wasn't enough for the Americans. But remember the British proposaL: that Saddam Hussein should make a statement on television that Iraq would rapidly take five disarmament measures. If that resolution had been adopted, if Iraq had fulfilled the conditions, there could have been a new dynamic. That was the calculation I had made. But that proposal collapsed in the Security Council.

L: The French didn't go along. If they had, could things have turned out differently?

B: The French thought that they would be implicated then in an authorization of force. They distrusted American intentions. They were convinced the war had already been decided.

L: Is there anything you would have done differently?

B: No. In the final analysis, we demonstrated that it is possible to create a team of United Nations inspectors who are independent, not directed by foreign secret services and at the same time, effective. That was not enough in the case of Iraq to change the outcome, but it is an experience to take into account for the future.

L: You don't think you should have said more forcefully that Iraq perhaps didn't have any weapons of mass destruction?

B: But we never stopped saying it! We said that we had no proof of the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but that we did have numerous proofs of the existence of unresolved questions.

At the end of January we had found 12 missile warheads and a pile of documents. At that e moment, I said: This could be the tip of the iceberg. But it could also be remains. Of course, when I think about it now, it seems more probable that it was nothing but remains. The same thing for the documents we found at the home of a scientist: that was consistent with the intelligence we had received for a long time from the intelligence services according to which Iraqi archives weren't in the companies or the ministries, but at private homes.

L: Where are the weapons? Can we speak of an enigma?

B: Yes, it is one. One can only speculate. The more time goes by, the more we must ask ourselves: if there are no weapons of mass destruction, what motivated the Iraqis? They could have avoided sanctions and suffering if there were no weapons. But Saddam Hussein saw himself as the Emperor of Mesopotamia. It didn't matter much to him if Iraqis suffered from the sanctions.

L: And where do you fit on the political chessboard?

B: I am a member of the Swedish Liberal Party. I am a non-Socialist somewhat to the left of center.